The Cottingley Fairies might not seem like the kind of story you’d expect on Paranormia. In 1917, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright produced photographs that appeared to show tiny winged figures, ‘fairies’, dancing beside Cottingley Beck. What could have stayed a family joke quickly spread far beyond the Yorkshire village. The images reached Theosophists who believed they were proof of hidden worlds, and eventually Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who published them in The Strand magazine and argued they might change how people think about reality. This episode explores how a childhood hoax became an international story, and why so many people, in a world still recovering from war and loss, wanted to believe it.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected].

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

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